Those crazy kids at IGN64 have begun a new weekly feature that looks at the most important players in the field of Nintendo. The first issue of this new feature looked at Factor 5, the creators of Rogue Squadron and to a greater extent the sound development tools for the Dolphin. IGN64 interviewed Julian Eggebrecht, El Presidente of Factor 5, where he talked on the sensitive issue of Nintendo's Dolphin and just about anything closely related to it...

IGN64: Being a Sega, Sony and Nintendo licensed developer, and being one of the few companies to possess both PS2 and Dolphin development kits, you're obviously in a situation where you know the ins and outs of both consoles. What would you say is easier to program for?

Julian: Dolphin, definitely. Let's put it this way. Everybody knows about the CPU design of the PS2. I mean, they made a big fuss about it with the vector units and everything. Of course, due to having programmed microcode for Nintendo 64, we're pretty experienced with exactly that. But nonetheless it's questionable how much microcode programming you really want to do when you're talking about your main game. It's simply faster if you can do everything on a general purpose CPU and in that sense, there is no question about it.

IGN64: You guys are working on Thornado for an unnamed next-generation system. Do you think the game will revolutionize? Do you consider it a pioneering effort?

Julian: I hope so because I haven't seen any revolutionary third-person 3D action title in the Contra style being done well. Developers have tried, and some of their games have been neat and you played them for a little while, but there hasn't been that revolutionary jump that really addresses all of the problems automatically introduced by going into 3D. Some of them have been tackled, a lot haven't been yet. I hope that we're going to break some barriers there.

IGN64: What are you hoping to achieve specifically by taking the Contra style game to a 3D environment?

Julian: The main thing will be to get that fine balance of exploration and the pure blowing everything up aspects. We do not want to over emphasize one over the other. That's going to be the main thing we're really playing around with. For example, the first level is going to be much more straightforward as we introduce you to the game. But we're already going heavily into exploration territory here and there in the second level. We'll also be integrating a strong storyline. Of course, we were very impressed with Half-Life. Although it was a first-person shooter, the storyline and it how it progressed made you feel much more for the characters. That's something that was missing from the old 2D games and we think it's really important.

IGN64: How is Thornado progressing?

Julian: Pretty good. Right now we've conceptualized everything to the very last bit. We've built quite a bit. We've done prototypes. We've done some sound work on it as you might have heard.

IGN64: Judging from what you know of Dolphin, do you think the PS2 games we've seen so far would be technically possible on it?

Julian: Easily. One thing I can firmly say from a developer's point of view is that when Nintendo says Dolphin has everything like PlayStation 2 and better, that's definitely something you can trust this time. I mean, I don't see any part of PlayStation 2 that Dolphin doesn't have at least the same power, if not more. It's not like N64 versus PlayStation where, as Jim Merrick said in a recent interview with you, the N64 had certain weaknesses. It had a much better display capability, it had a lot of nice features that the PlayStation could have used, but when it came to absolute poly count, the N64 is definitely below PlayStation. It's not that bad because it makes up for that, but nonetheless with Dolphin you don't have this situation where you have this weakness in one part and strong points in other parts. Nintendo has really thought about the whole system. It's very well rounded.

IGN64: Do you see the next-generation systems offering a means to create truly unique games that simply aren't possible on today's systems or, do you think that Dreamcast, PS2 and Dolphin software will merely be more of the same, but prettier?

Julian: Everybody will concentrate on graphics with their first-generation stuff because that's what you want to blow people away with. But already you're thinking -- and let's use Tekken Tag Tournament as an example -- the graphics are fantastic now and the characters are so well rounded, but now wouldn't it be nice to have a free environment like Square's Bouncer is hinting at. Bouncer, for me, was a very, very interesting demo and I'm looking forward to it a lot more than Tekken Tag simply because Tekken Tag takes everything to a new level visually, but still stays within the old boundaries. Whereas Bouncer -- though it wasn't playable -- seemed to try and do new stuff and that's what I'm really excited about.

IGN64: We're hearing from a lot of developers that they've had to redefine the publisher/developer relationship when producing Dreamcast, PS2 and Dolphin software. Have you had to change your business model to create next-generation games?

Julian: Yeah, that's the main thing, but does it change your business model? It just changes how much you have to pound on a publisher to give you more money [laughs]. People who started out in the 32-bit days may see it as a big jump with budgets nearly doubling, but if you've been working in the industry since the Super NES days, we're in exactly the same jump. I mean, it's scary on the one hand, but on the other hand the overall size of the industry is so huge in what you can sell in terms of numbers that it's justified.

IGN64: What are the differences between Nintendo 64 and Dolphin development?

Julian: [Laughs]. It's not a cartridge. We would love a cartridge. No, seriously, we've gotten so used to cartridge because it's so easy to get new data and you don't have to worry about load times. But on the other hand it's not really a feasible business model, as we all have found out. So what's the big difference? Well, first of all, it's a disk-based media. But the other thing is the amount of graphics that we can throw on screen. You can be a lot less concerned about displaying only a few polygons. You have to be a lot more concerned about, well, we've got so much power here -- how do we tackle it? That's more the thing. In that sense, it's very different. It's not about squeezing out every little bit. It's more about, well, we've got his huge pool, now let's try to pick the right things to do first so that we can create something very impressive that doesn't take too much time. Of course, with the graphics you can do on these machines -- PS2 and Dolphin -- you could spend literally years just creating high-polygon models in endless amounts. If you look at Tekken Tag Tournament, with the polygons you've got in those two fighters, you could easily model a complete city. They've got more polygons in one fighter than we had in a whole game on the 32-bit machines.

IGN64: Is there any excuse why the next-generation games should run under 30 frames per second?

Julian: I would love to say that we've got the 60 frames per second days back, but that's kind of optimistic. I was a little bit shocked when I went to Japan and saw the Kessen demo for PlayStation 2 running at 30 frames per second. I was like, "Ugh! It already starts." So yes, everybody is probably saying yes, we're back in the 60 frames per second days like in good old 2D times, but I'm a little bit skeptical. I hope that the really bad framerates -- below 30 -- are done for. I really don't want to see 20 anymore. And we've seen far too many games below even that for PlayStation and Nintendo 64. For the genres on the next-generation systems where it's really important to have 60 -- racing and fighting games in particular -- if you still deliver 30 frames per second I'd say you're dead in the water and rightfully so.